50 Years of Bachchan

To commemorate the fifty years of Amitabh Bachchan (counted from the day - 7th Nov - when Saat Hindustani released in 1969), Film Companion got together five writers to choose ten favourite scenes each and come up with a definitive listing of Bachchan's fifty most memorable scenes.
The contributors were Akshay Manwani, Anupama Chopra, Baradwaj Rangan, Pratim D Gupta and yours truly, giving me the worst case of Impostor Syndrome ever!

Nevertheless, I waded right in and gave in my list of ten - borrowing heavily from my childhood favourites, the films I grew up watching and whistling to. Some of my friends were scared I might put Toofan in and I did consider the entry scene for a bit but it got squeezed out by other worthies. The earliest film chosen was from 1975, it went all the way to 1992 before jumping two decades ahead to 2015.

So, here is my set of ten (which were edited slightly for the final inclusion).
And do visit the page on Film Companion. It is a beautifully designed, wonderfully written collector's item. You'll want to keep coming back to it!

Deewaar (1975)
The fight in the dockyard godown 
“Peter, tum log mujhe dhoond rahe ho aur main tumhara yahan intezar kar raha tha”, drawled a dockyard coolie – Vijay – as he locked the door of the villain’s den himself and took on a bunch of goons in an unequal fight. Unequal because none of those toughs had even a fraction of the searing intensity that Vijay was carrying in him since childhood. Interestingly, this was Deewaar’s only full-blown fight scene but it had a corrosive power not seen in the fifty years of Hindi cinema that preceded it. Just as Vijay had predicted, “Jo pachees baras mein nahin hua, woh ab hoga. Agle hafte ek aur coolie in mawalion ko paisa dene se inkaar karne wala hai.”

Amar Akbar Anthony (1977)
Anthony’s fight with Inspector Amar 
Anthony Gonsalves was a petty bootlegger who had helped a criminal escape from the police. This brought him in the crosshairs of Inspector Amar, who decided to teach him a lesson. The comic exchange between them and the fight that followed had two significances. From an angry young man, Amitabh Bachchan had taken the first step to become an entertainer (an avatar later made famous by Manmohan Desai). And in an industry of fragile egos, he was willing to be beaten unconscious by another star. Though he was easily the scene-stealer here. “Tum apun ko dus dus maara. Aur main sirf do. Pan solid maara ki nahin?”

Kaala Patthar (1978)
Pain is my destiny 
Vijay was a miner nobody had seen anything like. For starters, he seemed eager to get into life-threatening situations. He was punishing himself for some unknown crimes, hurting himself with as much fervour as helping someone else. Vijay’s brooding intensity intrigued as well as attracted the lady doctor to whom he was brought after coal particles got embedded in his skin. He refused anaesthesia when the doctor offered. “Pain is my destiny and I can’t avoid it” was his cry of anguish. This pithy line in English was like the mine’s siren going off. It signalled the darkness deep down.

Satte Pe Satta (1982) 
Babu comes out of jail 
Annette Pinto told us how RD Burman made her take a mouthful of water and gargle in tune, creating an eerie, edgy piece of music. A background score suitable for a ruthless, middle-aged assassin. When Babu came out of jail, he looked nothing like his supposed lookalike – the happy-go-lucky, healthy Ravi. He had a tired gait, a gaunt face, greying hair and eyes that looked like a bloodhound… one that had just eaten a human. At the peak of his heroic stardom, Amitabh Bachchan played an assassin and in one short scene, made us believe he was capable of spilling blood, lots of it.

Shakti (1982) 
Raakhee's death
The advertising line ‘Battle of the Titans’ is usually a lie or at best, an exaggeration. Except once. When Dilip Kumar faced Amitabh Bachchan in Shakti, the line seemed woefully inadequate. And in an almost subversive move, some of Bachchan’s scenes were without dialogues – relying on his eyes and body language to do the job. DCP Ashwini Kumar’s wife was shot dead by his enemies and his son, Vijay, was brought from prison for his mother’s funeral. The son knelt in front of the father and tried to console him before failing and starting to cry. He then walked off with a determination that precipitated the climax.

Coolie (1983) 
Getting shot at Haji Ali
“Chala goli… Tere haath mein maut ka samaan hai, toh mere seene pe khuda ka naam hai!”, challenged Iqbal the coolie just before his adversary pulled the trigger. The bullet pierced the holy chadar and the legendary baritone started reciting holy verses and advanced up the minarets of Haji Ali. Amitabh’s menace was palpable in this scene because the man with the gun was retreating and the man taking the bullets was advancing. Manmohan Desai later described how Amitabh rolled his eyeballs and you could only see the whites, giving this scene an eerie resonance. There were many chapters in Amitabh’s stardom. Coolie was the first chapter in Amitabh’s divinity.

Agneepath (1990)
Maut ke saath apintment 
Everyone knows how Vijay Dinanath Chavan walked out a police station to keep an appointment with death. The scene that followed – his four adversaries waiting, his car screeching to a halt, a hail of bullets, Vijay emerging from the car unscathed and then getting shot by the quartet – was Julius Caesar, The Godfather, Scarface… all rolled into one. His slow-motion collapse as the bullets punctured him one by one was as magnificent heroism got on celluloid. And of course, Vijay came back. He liquidated his enemies and told the world, “Yeh chhe feet ka body lurkane ke liye char inch ka goli kam padh gaya… maloom?”

Hum (1991) 
Tiger returns 
With flops (Jaadugar), painful rehashes (Gangaa Jamunaa Saraswathi) and offbeat roles (Main Azaad Hoon), the thrills of a Bachchan film went missing in the late 1980s. Hum brought that masala back. But as we saw the older, pacifist Amitabh, we understood that the new guns – Govinda and Rajinikanth – would ‘do’ the climax and Amitabh would be in the background. And that’s when a driver at a bus-stand decided to insult his family. The familiar bugle-like war-music sounded, the sober spectacles came off and the familiar anger took centre-stage. The old lion shook his mane and tore into his prey. Tiger zinda hai!

Khuda Gawah (1992)
End of bouzkashi
Shot in Afghanistan and mounted on a humongous scale, Khuda Gawah lived up to the hype in its very first minute with the jaw-dropping bouzkashi game. What seemed like hundreds of horses charged into each other to take control of the dead lamb aka bouz and fateh was supposed to be Badshah Khan’s. As the final two adversaries violently tugged at the bouz, one’s turban came off to reveal the peerless Sridevi as Benazir. Badshah Khan gallantly gave up control of the prize to lose the game. “Badshah baazi nahin, zindagi haar gaya!” What did someone say about haarke jeetne wale ko?

Piku (2015)
The mumbles of a Bengali uncle 
Anand’s stern doctor Bhaskar Banerjee returned as a hypochondriac old man, with all the typical quirks and idiosyncrasies of a cantankerous Bengali uncle. Households in Calcutta and Chittaranjan Park laughed along as the old Mr Banerjee made his eccentric pronouncements, insulting people for their lack of – what he considered – education and intelligence. In a hilarious dinner conversation with Moushumi Chatterjee, Bhaskar babu mumbled “Illiterate” under his breath before declaring “Sirf low IQ wala log hi shaadi karta hai”. The scene was a delightful exposition of the character’s humour, helplessness, sensitivity and intelligence. It was emotion in motion!